Former badminton men’s singles world No 1 Kidambi Srikanth’s run at the Swiss Open Super 300 ended with a close semi-final loss on Saturday.
The Indian, now 31, lost 21-15, 9-21, 18-21 to Taiwan’s Lin Chun-Yi in a match that lasted an hour and five minutes. This was the first time since the 2022 Hylo Open Super 300 in Germany that Srikanth had reached this far in a BWF Tour event.
He started the match off well, taking an early lead and then extending it to 11-5 before holding on to close out the game 21-15.
Srikanth had taken another early lead in the second game as well, leading 4-1. But Lin then won eight of the next nine points to go up 9-5 and continued to rapidly build on that before winning the game 21-9 and taking the match into the decider.
Lin had a good start to the game this time, leading 6-2 before Srikanth started to claw his way back. After 6-6, there was not much to separate the two on the scoresheet as they started to trade points regularly. At 16-16 however, Lin won three points on the trot to go up to 19-16.
Lin, in a good position to win, converted on his second match point to secure a spot for himself in the final.